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Despite being careful and doing the necessary research, MMOData.net cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here as it is based on various sources which could be incomplete, inaccurate or otherwise unreliable. Furthermore, all estimates are the opinion of MMOData.net and should be treated as such.

My personal opinion on this is that, EVE Online is one of the few examples of how an mmorpg should be run :

By slowly but steadily improving all aspects of the game; gameplay, content, graphics, sound ( okay sound still needs a bit more work :p ) , ... and not making old content obsolete but part of the larger picture.

By inclusion, with one server ( not counting China ) where players from all over the world can play together. With no instances, so the players can go to any place they want. With free but obligatory expansions, putting everyone on the same level ( all content is accessible by everyone ) and no short term goals to be able to sell the expansion, as is often the case in other mmo's.

By a reassuring long term vision, so you know your investment in time, money and emotion will be there for years to come and will not be degraded as it was in SWG with the NGE for example. Sure DUST514 scared me a bit, but up until now CCP has yet to dissapoint me, so I'll take a leap of faith.

With 2,9 million registered users in alpha a 3000 PCU per server and ready to be deployed server farm to support 100 shards, Lord of the Rings Online shows potential to become a worldwide player. If the 100 shards get medium to high populated then we can expect around 1 million Chinese players / subscriptions.

This is of course speculation, but it is nice to see there is interest in another Western MMO.

Meanwhile, WoW is back fully operational since sept. 19, but there seems to be a power struggle between several Chinese government organisations, most notably the MoC and the GAPP, to gain control over the lucrative and prestigious Online Gaming sector.

The GAPP says it did not gave green light for WoW:The Burning Crusade, while the MoC did gave permission to Netease to run the game commercially.

To me it looks like the GAPP ( the ones that want to close down WoW again ) will be on the short end of the stick, as the central government gave MoC more jurisdiction and the GAPP less, concerning online games.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

- Majorly revised datapoints for Dofus.
- Added datapoints for EVE Online ( both PCU and Subs )
- Removed some datapoints for EVE Online to make the chart less cluttered.
- Added datapoint for SWG.
- Revised / Added datapoints for Aion.
- Added datapoint for DAoC.
- Slightly revised estimated datapoint for WAR.
- Removed a datapoint for Everquest that looked like an anomaly.
- Revised / Added datapoints for Ultima Online.
- Removed some datapoints for Ultima Online to make the chart less cluttered.
- Revised datapoint for FFXI
- Added datapoint for Pirates of the Burning Sea
- Added PCU datapoint for Dofus
- Added PCU datapoints for Fantasy Westward Journey
- Removed incorrect PCU datapoint for Zhengtu
- Rearranged the mmo's and charts, charts are now : 1m-12m, 150k-1m, 40k-150k, 0-40k.
- Expanded the PCU chart to 2,6m to accomodate Fantasy Westward Journey.
- Removed Dungeon Fighter Online from MMOData.net because it was not in line with the MMO definition.
- Revised accuracy ratings for : PotBS, SWG and Dofus.
- Moved the Source links into comments to datapoints in the excel and cleaned them up, for now the source links will no longer be public until I have time to put them back.
- Renamed Accuracy Rating and Source Links into MMO and Accuracy List.
- Added MMOG Contribution chart.
- Removed Top10 chart, this may return again later.
- Renamed PCU : Single Cluster Servers into PCU : Largest Shards.
- Placed "MMOData.net" and version number on the charts.
- Replaced macros with build-in functions ( internal ).
- Changed the look of the datapoints on the charts.
- Moved away from uniform colors across charts.
- Made various other cosmetic changes.
- Made various other internal changes.

Yes Blizzard does get a lot less money from the Chinese subscribers, but that is not only because the Chinese pay less, but also because Blizzard is not allowed to run online games in China by itself and has to use expensive Chinese providers to run the game for them.

That is also why Blizzard changed from the The9 to the Netease provider, because they would get more royalties.

According to the Gamasutra article here : Gamasutra Blizzard will get around $140 million in royalties annually, at the time China had around 5 million subs. ( 6,5m subs for Asia ). $140m devided by 5m chinese players equals $28, devided by 12 months equals $2,3. Blizzard gets around 55% of the royalties, so the average Chinese player pays around $5 per month. That is assuming the royalties are calculated on the total revenue, otherwise it could be even more.

$5 per month may not be much to our standards, but you have also to take into consideration that employees in China are a lot cheaper, so they have less operational costs compared to the EU or US.

If you go look at the source Wolfsheadonline used : Gamasutra then there it is clear that the 6% revenue is because of the 22% royalty deal with The9 ( as in Blizzard gets only 22% of the money made from the Chinese players ), this actually results in $1 royalty per month per Chinese player, which is consistent with the other article, because if the royalty is more than doubled ( from 22% to 55% ) then we get around $2,5 doubled again to get the total of around $5 per Chinese player.

These are rough calculations, and hovers around $5 per month per Chinese player, but it certainly is not $1 like Wolfsheadonline claims.

In the same way, Europeans pay quite a bit more than Americans because of the strong Euro. If you take into account the lower salaries of the Chinese, the difference between China 5$ and the US 15$ is not that much bigger than the difference between the US 15$ and the EU 20$. So should we not take into account the American players?

Imho even tho the Blizzard numbers are not perfect, they are pretty valid, including the Asian part.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Well it looks like it will take a while before we see a new Peak Concurrent User record in the "Peak Concurrent Users on the Largest Single Cluster servers" from either EVE Online or Second Life.

However, there are good reasons for this, and it is not because the mmo's are getting less popular ...

For EVE Online it is because of the heavy fight from CCP against illegal RMT and the accompanied macroers and account hackers, also called "The Unholy Rage".The impact during this summer was very big in certain areas of the server, and in one instance during the unholy rage, the overall PCU dropped around 5k.You can read this in the CCP dev blog here :CCP Devblog Unholy Rage

For Second Life it is because of the new Bot policy. Which restricts the use of traffic and camping bots. The PCU dropped around 8k initially and will probably drop even more as landbots will be slowly replaced by web tools.You can read about it here :Second Life blog about the economyAnd here :Second Life blog about bots

Still both operations will result in an overall better and healthier gaming experience for both games. In EVE Online you can already see the PCU is slowly getting back to the level where it was in June, I will not be surprised if we see a new record soon. Also Second Life will certainly go up again, and the PCU will consist of a lot more actual players and less bots.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

What happened is that when Ankama talked about "Subscribers" in their press releases, they actually meant "Monthly active players". They did make a clear distinction between "Subscribers" and "Registered Users", that is how I made the mistake.

So while the 800k, 1,5m and now 3m numbers were not paying subscribers, they are Monthly Active Users, and still a nice number to have.

Their actual active paying subscriber number is 500k at the moment, still a very respectable number. Obviously this will be fixed in v2.1 of MMOData.net, and I will do my best to avoid flaws of this magnitude in the future.

Friday, October 2, 2009

CCP will provide me with subscription data directly from now on, updated monthly. Aren't they a nice bunch? :) This shows how confident they are.

I have already received all the datapoints from release up to and including September 2009, and to no surprise they perfectly match with what Sir Bruce and myself had already. Of course I can now fill some gaps from the latest months. These will be included in v2.1 of mmodata.net.

As more developers and publishers do this, MMOData.net grows to become the place to be for reliable mmog numbers and the ones that do not, well we can assume they have something to hide :)

Also getting a lot of feedback lately, mostly constructive and/or positive, I am very happy with that, don't be afraid to send me some more e-mails :p I have received some good ideas to improve MMOData.net already and implemented some of them.

Lastly I had some requests to get my excel data. If you are from the mmo industry and can provide mewith numbers for one or more mmo's, then I will be happy to give you my data in return.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Aion West has been live for a few days now and it seems pretty popular. The 25 servers that are currently running Aion in the EU and the USA are packed.

Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts.

I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Most important for me is that I have upgraded from Excel 2003 to 2007. I had to get familiar with Excel 2007, but that was not too hard.Going to Excel 2007 allowed me to make a cosmetic overhaul more easely.I have added and revised datapoints for Aion, AoC, WAR, EQ and EQII and hoping to have more new datapoints when 2.0 goes live. I also updated Accuracy Ratings.I also started on revising the color coding of the mmo's to make them more consistent across the charts and continued to clean up the source links.Finally I made various internal changes and improvements, so I can bring you more updates faster and better :p

The ETA for version 2.0 is Sunday 13 september.

update :I need a few more days to get version 2.0 ready, hoping to have it ready before Sunday 20 September.

update :Version 2.0 is finalized, it should be live by tomorrow, Saturday 19 september

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

NCSoft Quarterly results are out, the only thing we learn there is that servers substantially increased in China, from 113 to 154, and in Kora from 41 to 43. This reinforces the growth of the game, however there are still no hard numbers in the report, which has me worried. Will this become a trend, or is it because it is low season ... I am going to send them a mail about this.

I restated the WoW China numbers as WoW China is back online and added a new data point from Guinness World Records : 11,6 million at May 2009.

I hope to get more numbers in September and October when everyone is back at work and play :p

Version 1.8 notes :

- Restated WoW china numbers and updated WoW numbers.
- Adjusted the accuracy rating for WoW to A
- Rescaled the CAS Top 10 chart to accomodate the WoW numbers
- Made some cosmetic changes
- Adjusted the accuracy rating for Aion to D
- Added some source links for Aion and WoW
- Made some internal changes

Monday, July 13, 2009

I made this new version rather fast after the 1.6 release, mostly because the extended downtime for WoW China seems to last longer than expected. Therefore I am putting the WoW China numbers now at 0.

The WoW China downtime already lasts for more than a month now, during this month, no Chinese subscriptions are active. This may last another 2 months or even longer, depending on the Chinese authorities re-evaluating WoW China.

You can check the sources at the Source Links.

Version 1.7 notes :

- Revised WoW Asia datapoints : Due to the extended downtime of WoW China, which is more than a month now, I have put the WoW China numbers for June at 0
- Internal : Moved all WoW comments to the WoW data sheet
- Internal : Moved all Second Life comments to the Second Life data sheet
- Renamed "Accuracy Ratings" into "Accuracy Ratings and Source Links", added a "Source Links" link
- Added and/or Removed some source Links for WoW, Runescape, Zhengtu, LOTRO, WAR
- Added some PCU datatpoints for WoW, Runescape
- Fixed an error in the Current Active Subscriber sheet
- Changed the MMOG Active Subscriptions Top 20 into Top 10
- Revised the numbers for LOTRO ( an error was made in the previous estimate )
- Added a new estimate for WAR
- Made various cosmetic changes to the charts
- Started on making the source links better readable, finished AoC
- Changed WoW accuracy rating from A to B ( until I get some better numbers again )

Monday, June 29, 2009

It has been circling in the news for a while now, but I haven't had the time yet to comment about it, I am talking about censorship and content blocking here.

Australia apparently already had an internet filter which they now want to use to filter out all game downloads and online games that are not suited for 15 year olds, this in addition to all the websites already blocked ... so if you are a 30 year old wanting to have some fun in a game like Age of Conan, Second Life, or even World of Warcraft, you may be out of luck in the near future.

Now many MMO's may be able to get rated and found suitable for 15 year olds ( EVE Online is rated and allowed ). The main problem here is that there is no 18+ classification for video games in Australia ( there is one for Films though, I mean wtf? ), so if it is material not suited for a 15 year old, you are out of luck.

In the past there have been occasions that the Classification Board themselves had advised that MMO's do not have to get classified, and it was unwritten knowledge for MMO developers and publishers that you did not need to classify your MMO in Australia.

They were wrong however, and soon many MMO players may find this out the hard way when the new filter starts blocking everything.

But it gets even crazier and I quote : "The list of what is actually blocked and why it is blocked is to be kept secret from the public (though in March a version was leaked to Wikileaks, which is now itself on the blocklist)." That is nuts; you can expect something like that from China or Turkey, but from Australia? I am so glad I live in Belgium! I do not consider Australia a free democracy anymore, but rather a police state with no freedom of speech.

And it goes even further :"Currently nine ISPs are trialing the network-filtering plan until next month, which has already proven to block some quite unexpected things: "Alongside child porn, bestiality, rape and extreme violence sites, the list also includes a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist. Other Australian sites on the list are canteens.com.au ("Tuckshop and Canteen Management Consultants") and animal carers MaroochyBoardingKennels.com.au. The dentist, Dr John Golbrani, was furious when contacted to inform him that his site, dentaldistinction.com.au, appeared on the blacklist." – Sydney Morning Herald "

Can you believe that?

I hope the Aussie gamers, internet users and the rest of the people there start some serious protesting and don't go down silently. For what it’s worth, I got your back!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

- Made an Accuracy rating for all the listed MMO's.
- Removed some estimates.
- Removed some duplicate datapoints
- Removed some disclaimers about EVE Online and Second Life
- Removed following charts for various reasons : Top 10 premium western mmo's, All listed MMOG's CAS, Total MMOG contribution
- Made the Second Life chart internal only
- Added disclaimers
- Added credits
- Changed from html charts to png charts
- Made various cosmetic changes to the site.
- Fixed http://MMOData.net domain/link

Next version will contain more revised and updated numbers and links to sources.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Well, It has been old news that The9 would loose the rights over WoW and that they would be transferred to Netease.

However, it was only recently that the servers shutdown, june 7, and they will be down for 3-6 weeks.

Now the downtime in itself will make them lose some players, but at the same time Aion is gaining momentum in Asia, so it will be very interesting to see what will happen and how many players will return after their 1 month break, or if they decide to try Aion and stick ...

Sunday, June 14, 2009

I am happy to announce that my first version of the MMOData Charts is live.

It took a lot of work and researching to fill the 1 year gap that Sir Bruce left. I also made revisions to the excel so I could change the data faster, because the MMOG scene is evolving rapidly and new MMOG's come and go all the time.

My work is far from complete, there are still gaps to fill, mmog's to add to the list, and new features that I'd like to implement.

One of the main features I'd like to add is Worldwide Active Players charts, currently I use 2 main data types, Subscription Numbers and Peak Concurrent Users, an Active Player chart would allow us to compare Asian and Western mmo's with eachother. This won't be an easy task, and it will not be as accurate as the Subscription or PCU numbers, but it will give us a good indication. I am hoping to make this in version 2.0 or 3.0

Monday, June 1, 2009

1. They must be in line with the MMOData.net MMORPG definition :
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
- The game should have the capability to support at least 500 concurrent users on a single shard.
- The game must include a graphical common area where players can interact with one another inside of the persistent game world. This excludes lobby and chat room based interaction.
- Combining point 1 and 2 : There must be a graphical common area where in theory 500 players can come together and interact with one another.
- The game must make use of persistent characters or avatars. This means that you should be able to log in after logging out and find your character or avatar as advanced as you left them (or more).
- The game must contain some form of advancement.

2. Need to have at least 2 good datapoints to be allowed on a chart.

3. For PCU or Active Account datapoints to be valid, an MMORPG has to be in Open Beta or beyond. For Subscription datapoints to be valid, an MMORPG has to be fully released.

4. MMOData.net Subscription definition :Subscription based MMORPG's are tagged with SS
MMORPG subscriptions must meet one of the following requirements to be allowed on the subscription based charts :
- Susbcribers who have paid a subscription fee of minimal $1 per month.
- Players who have an active prepaid card of minimal $1 per month.
- Players who have purchased an mmorpg and are within their free month of access.
- Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days, if there is a revenue of $1 or more per subscriber per month.
- Players who purchased virtual items or ingame currency for $1 or more per month.

5. MMOData.net Active Account definition :Active Account based MMORPG's are tagged with AA
For an account to be regarded as active, there must be a completed login into the game server at least once per month.
Also included in this definition are all valid subscriptions in accordance with point 4. MMOData.net Subscription definition.

Note :
If anyone thinks some MMORPG made the charts while not fulfilling these requirements, please send an email to ibe@mmodata.net to report, and it will be investigated.

Note :
The MMORPG list and charts are based on latest available data, if no new data is made available, certain MMORPG's may be misrepresented. Furthermore many MMORPG's are not listed here because I have not enough information.

AAActive Accounts
As opposed to SS : Subscriptions.
See Requirements and definitions for a more elaborate definition, as used by MMOData.net.

Alts
Alternative characters, as opposed to a main character.

AIArtificial Intelligence
Refers to the "intelligence" programmed into a game that controls the actions and reactions of NPCs, simulating independent intelligence.

Avatar
The graphical representation of a player in a game, this can be a person or creature, but also a ship or a car for example.

Bot
Automated/scripted character, which is illegal in most mmo's.
It can also be a second character on another account brought along merely to buff or heal, in this case it is mostly called a buffbot.

Crafting
A general category of skills that allows players to manufacture objects from raw resources.

Cluster
A backbone of servers that power a single shard. Examples are the EVE Online and Second Life shards, each powered by hundreds of servers. But also the traditional MMORPG's use server clustering to run their smaller shards, albeit on a more modest 2 to 8 servers on the most common mmo's.

CUCombat Upgrade
A not very well received revamp of the combat system in Star Wars Galaxies.

Dupe
Illegal copies of particular items obtained while using an exploit or bug.

EastEastern countries, most notably, but not limited to : China, South Korea and Japan. Opposed to West - Western countries, most notably, but not limited to : Europe, North America and Australia

E3Electronic Entertainment Expo

Exploit
Taking advantage of a glitch or game mechanic to gain an advantage that is not allowed per the terms of use of the game.

F2PFree To Play
As opposed to pay to play.
Free to play systems use microtransactions and cash shops.

FFAFree For All
A loot option that allows any party member to loot. Also used in terms of PvP, where you can fight everyone and/or where you can loot everyone.

GMGame Master

GuildClan, Corporation
An organization of players. Most of the time guilds are supported by in-game systems that allow for sharing of resources, experiences, and information with other members.

Instance
These are private non-persistent area's on a server where there can be 1 or more identical copies. In SWTOR they are called flashpoints. Examples from WoW : The Deadmines, Molten Core, ...
In EVE Online there are no instances, there are however complexes, which are areas inside systems ( read zones ), they can be persistent or non-persistent but they are always public ( as opposed to instances which are always private ) and thus everyone can find and enter them.

IMHOIn my humble/honest opinion

IRLIn Real Life

Lag
Slowdowns in an online game as a result of latency with the connection to the server.

LMAOLaughing My Arse Off

Main
Your primary character of all the characters you play

Microtransactions
A payment system where players buy virtual items, currency, services or other virtual parts of an MMORPG, these kind of MMORPG's are also often called F2P because some parts of it are free to play. This is the opposite of a subscription system where the players pay a monthly fee for the complete package.

MMORPGMassively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
The MMOData.net definition of an MMORPG can be found here :
See Requirements and definitions for a more elaborate definition, as used by MMOData.net.

MMOGMassively Multiplayer Online Game
See MMO

MMOMassively Multiplayer Online
Pretty much the same as an MMORPG, minus the roleplaying part. This could be for example an MMOFPS or MMORTS. Sometimes without avatars as we know it in MMORPG's.

MMOFPSMassively multiplayer online first-person shooter

MMORTSMassively multiplayer online real-time strategy

MUURLMonthly Unique User Repeat Logins
Used in Second Life as a means to determine the amount of active players. Previously they used MUUL.

MUULMonthly Unique User Logins
Used in Second Life, World of Warcraft and others as a means to determine the amount of active players and/or subscribers. Second Life now uses MUURL instead though. Blizzard still uses MUUL to count their Asian Internet Café players, but only in combination with prepaid cards, if you haven't bought a prepaid card, you won't be counted. ( aka Trials etc ).

MUDMulti User Dungeon
A digital world that contains multiple players, most of the original muds were text based.

MOBMobile Object Block
Strictly speaking, Mobs are all computer controlled characters in the game, but in practice MOB is only used for NPC's you can attack. While the term NPC is used for characters you can interact with ( like vendors, quest givers, etc. ).

MOOMUD Object Oriented
Users in MOOs are able to create their own content - both static and dynamic objects.

Min/Maxing
When players attempt to create their characters as powerful as they can be by crunching statistics, planning their future routes, and any other methods in order to make their characters the statistically best character possible.

Nerf
To downgrade, make less effective.

Newbie
A term that means a new, inexperienced player, also used to suggest that a player is not good.

NPCnon player character
The characters are controlled by the system. A "computer" character.

Ninja
To loot something very quickly before anyone else can take it, considered the same as stealing.

NGENew Gaming Experience
A complete transformation from the old, pre-NGE SWG sandbox style MMORPG into the new SWG, theme park style MMORPG. Sony Online Entertainment hoped to replace the userbase at that time with a new bigger userbase. Generally accepted as one of the biggest mistakes in MMORPG history.

OMGOh my god
Term used to express surprise about something.

PKPlayer Killing

P2PPay To Play
As opposed to free to play.
Pay to play means using a monthly subscription model.

Patch
A downloadable update that fixes bugs, improves stability and introduces new features to a program.

PvPPlayer versus Player
This is the fighting between players, as opposed to fighting mobs.

PCUPeak Concurrent Users
The highest number of players online at the same time.

Premium
I use the term Premium for all MMOG's with a monthly subscription higher than $10.

Quest
An adventure requiring cunning, discipline and bravery to succeed, but invariably undertaken with idiocy, disorder and cowardice. Reward is always inversely proportional to the effort and risk involved.

Raid
A raid is a large-scale attack on an area by a group of players.

RMTReal Money Trade
This is the trading of real life money for ingame items or currency between players. Often this is not allowed/legal by the EULA.
RMT has a broader scope than microtransactions, microtransactions are always between the player and the company running the MMORPG.
RMT can be between the player and the company, between players themselves or both.
In EVE Online there is a special system using PLEX ( Pilot License Extension ) where you can buy a PLEX from CCP which is worth 1 month of playtime. You can use it for the playtime or sell it for ISK ( ingame currency ) to other players, effectively buying ISK for real life money. This is a form of RMT between players, because you do not buy the ISK from CCP but from other players. Players with enough ISK can play the game for free, while other players pay extra.

RP
Role Playing

RvRRealm versus Realm
A factional PvP system where there are generally 2 or 3 sides ( realms ) fighting each other.
This was essentially invented by Mythic with the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot, but since then never really successfully replicated.
For an RvR game to work there are a few important requirements :
- There have to be ideally 3 sides, so in case when one side becomes dominant, the 2 underdog sides can work together.
- There have to be some elements of persistence and rewards, for example :
Claiming and holding keeps until you decide to release it or an enemy takes it over by force.
Being able to take a relic from the enemy ( which gives a realm wide boost in power ) and keep it until the enemy takes it back by force.
Being able to control a number of keeps and by that unlocking extra content as long as these keeps are under the control of your realm ( for example Darkness Falls ).
- There has to be Realm Pride ( players working together to defend their realm ), you can get this by having persistent elements as described above and having the choice of your realm locked.
Meaning you can't play 2 or 3 different sides on the same server.
- There has to be population control, when there are too many players in one Realm, this Realm should be locked ( no new player can create new characters on the locked server and only part of the locked realm can log in ). There can also be given boosts to Realms that have less population ( best example is to boost guards, so the fight evens out a bit ).
- There has to be a certain level of balance between the classes of the realms.

Rollback
The full state of the game world is usually not saved permanently on the game servers continuously, but is done at intervals. To fix a big problem with a gaming world, the game may be rolled back to a previous state. Players possessions, their whereabouts, their state, etc. will all be rolled back and appear to be in the same state as they were on that point in time.

Realm
A Realm has 2 meanings :
1. Used in RvR games and has essentially the same meaning as a Faction.
2. Used as a synonym for Shard, however this is not recommended to avoid confusion.

Regions
A region can have several meanings :
1. The MMO server region, often servers are divided into several regions, some examples are : Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, ...
On many occasions it is not possible to play in a different region depending on IP address or Serial code.
2. EVE Online Regions : These are a collection of Constellations, which are in turn a collection of Systems. The EVE Trade market is based on these regions and if you wish to do inter-regional trade you will have to physically transport the goods.

RLReal Life
As opposed to your virtual life.

Sandbox
A type of MMORPG where you have more freedom than more traditional MMORPG's. Notable examples of sandbox MMORPG's are : EVE Online, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies Pre-CU-NGE, Second Life.

Skills
Various abilities the character is capable of using, such as wielding specific types of weapons, wearing specific types of armor, casting specific types of spells, or even creating specific types of items.

Server
A Server is a combination of hard and software that services a client computer, in the case of MMORPG's they service the game world, mail system, item and character database and more.
Even though it is often used as a synonym to a Shard or Realm, it is not the same, there can be many servers in 1 shard, and many shards can use a single server for specific purposes ( i.e. a mail system ).
Generally it is best to use the term Shard instead of Server when talking about a single MMORPG game world.

Shard
This is the collection of 1 or more servers that make up a single entity or game world, in principle, all players can go to all the places inside this game world as opposed to going to another shard, which is generally not possible.
The main EVE shard Tranquility is an example of a large clustered shard that can hold 50k players and more at once.
Second Life is also an example of a single large clustered shard.
In World of Warcraft many small shards are used. Using the term shard is preferred over server or realm when talking about single game worlds.

SSSubscriptions
As opposed to AA : Active Accounts.
See Requirements and definitions for a more elaborate definition, as used by MMOData.net.

Theme Park
A linear MMO, with less freedom and more prefabricated content as opposed to a Sandbox MMO. Notable examples of Theme Park MMO's : EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online.

WestWestern countries, most notably, but not limited to : Europe, North America and Australia. Opposed to East - Eastern countries, most notably, but not limited to : China, South Korea and Japan.

Zones
These are public persistent area's on a server, there are no identical copies of zones.
Examples from WoW : Northrend, Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outland ... , these zones are interconnected by Portals, Zeppelins, Boats, ...
Examples from EVE : Regular Empire and 0.0 systems ( these are interconnected by jumpgates ), Wormhole systems ( these are connected to regular systems by wormholes ), Stations, ... these are all examples of zones in EVE online.

Zerg
A combat strategy where a large group of players play together and generally overwhelm the enemy by numbers ( mostly used in PvP but also possible in PvE ). Often seen as a simple-minded strategy that requires no skill, then again often a necessity ( safety by numbers ) or a more social approach. Originated from the Zerg rush tactic from StarCraft.

A rating – Most or all of the datapoints come from official or other reliable sources and are in line with other numbers and information.

B rating – Part of the datapoints come from official or other reliable sources and part of the datapoints come from estimates, third party sources, unclear official sources or other indirect information.

C rating – Some of the datapoints may come from official or other reliable sources, many of the datapoints come from estimates, third party sources, unclear official sources or other indirect information.

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